Bridget Currie: Message from the meadow

16 July – 4 September 2021

Bridget Currie: Message from the meadow

Opening :
Friday 16 July, 6-8pm

This exhibition is accompanied by a print publication.

Message from the meadow is a new landmark solo exhibition by South Australian artist Bridget Currie.

The outcome of ACE Open’s inaugural Porter Street Commission, Message from the meadow is an immersive, meditative exploration of how artworks can trigger sensory affect.

Across her practice, Currie incorporates sculpture, furniture, film, and sound to explore the representation of abstract states of being, systems of thought and the vitality of life. Inspired by the way Modernist artists sought to represent spiritual states and religious ideas through abstraction, the central concern of Currie’s practice is bringing invisible things — beliefs, emotions and dreams — into the material world.

Message from the meadow is an exhibition alert to the both the proximities and boundaries between bodies, objects and space: organic, abstract forms made intuitively by the artist serve as physical koans (things that exist to ask a question), displayed amongst an ecology of bespoke domestic furniture that privileges intimacy and tactility. Currie has also constructed a sonic landscape of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and spoken text (poetry, storytelling and new age guided meditation) to accompany the viewer and assist in short circuiting the logical mind. Alongside this physical grammar of objects, Message from the meadow premieres Currie’s new film, soft insides — a non-linear documentation of pre-language encounters.

Developed across 2020 under digitally fragmented and socially distanced conditions, Message from the meadow therapeutically encourages a deeper engagement with place and the self.

About the artist
Born in 1979 on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia, Bridget Currie has exhibited widely in Australia since graduating from Bachelor Visual Arts (Honours) in 2001. She has previously exhibited at 24 Hr Art, Darwin; Artbank, Sydney; Artspace, Sydney; Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Most recently, she has presented significant new work at The Art Gallery of South Australia and the Adelaide Central School of Art Gallery. Currie has also undertaken a wide range of learning and residency opportunities across Asia and Europe. This includes residences at CCA Kitakyushu in Japan (2007-08) and Rupert in Vilnius, Lithuania (2016); as well as postgraduate study at the Kunglia Konsthogskolan in Stockholm, supported by an Anne & Gordon Samstag Visual Arts Scholarship (2011).

Bridget Currie is the inaugural recipient of the Porter Street Commission – ACE Open’s newly established annual art award supporting new artwork commissions by South Australian artists.
Presented as part of the South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival.
This project has been generously supported by the South Australian Government through Arts South Australia.
soft insides 2018-2020 is supported by the Guildhouse Catapult mentorship program.
Furniture made in collaboration with Dean Toepfer of Mixed Goods Studios.